Nepotism on the Faroe Islands

The Faeroe Islands is an isolated community in the North Atlantic with long family histories, where fathers pass their trades or companies onto their sons. Everyone knows everyone else and it is difficult to separate business from friendship. Your co-workers sit in the same church, live in the same village and you can drop by for a cup of coffee without calling ahead. It is a quiet, safe and rooted by deep traditions and norms. To hire your friends and family first is second nature, no matter the job, and to do otherwise can cause friction in the community. However, the isolated community in the middle of the North Atlantic is no longer isolated from the rest of the world, and is being influenced by technology and culture that was before foreign to it, and with the immigration of technology and culture, new norms that the Faeroe Islands never knew before.

The world is evolving, and a global culture is slowly forming, marked by films, foods, languages and sports. Along with common sports such as football and hand ball, and films that are shown the world over, comes norms and morals. Every culture in history has been introduced to new norms and morals at one point or another, as a gate way to participating in an global economy, telecommunications and society. The Faeroe Islands is no exception. New norms are making in roads, and it is no long true, that everyone knows everyone else. Still, there are some bastions that have a strong foot hold in the culture, the chief among them is nepotism.

The definition of nepotism is, according to Wikipedia, favoritism granted to relatives regardless of merit. If you grant your son a job, despite others performing better than he, then you are practicing nepotism. If you were passed over for a job, despite being the most qualified candidate, and see a relative of the person hiring granted the position, you were the victim of nepotism. Most of us have experience with nepotism in one or another form.

But is it okay?

We all should respect the rights of ownership and dominion over property. If the owner of a business chooses to give the business away, no one can dictate who the business is given to, for example, a child. The dream of handing down the family business is strong in all people. Nepotism can be a necessity in this case, where a child must be raised for the position. To those working for the company, it may seem like the child was never qualified for the job, that they are more deserving of the rewards given to the child. Ownership of a business doesn't require any qualifications, other than you are legally allowed to own a business. However, to run a business, owners must know something about business, and that can require a little bit of on the job training.

In other instances, nepotism has nothing to do with necessity, but protectionism at the expense of others. The dangers of nepotism is how it affects society. Even when you do not work for a company, organization or office, the nepotism practiced there can effect you personally. If an person is hired based on family relations instead of qualifications, you are at risk of receiving unqualified service. When you file a request at the local kommun office, you have the right to be served by the most qualified person the kommun could hire, and have a reasonable expectation for professional and competent service. This is not always the case, and receiving incorrect information or unqualified service can result in cases lost, appeals denied and personal economic damages. In these cases, nepotism was never a necessity and should never be tolerated. Like wise, when you apply to work for a company, you can experience nepotism in the form of a hiring manager favoring a cousin who just graduated 10^th grade, for a position that receives public funds, money to which you contribute to through taxes.

But, what can one do you protect yourself from this practice?

The best advice available is to write a letter to a news paper, telling the reader where and who is practicing nepotism, and how it has unfairly hurt you; if you were hurt by this practice, others are also at risk and should know about it. You can also tell your friends, this company or that office may not have the most qualified employees, enabling your network to make more informed decisions, if they will spend their money for services from a company that has questionable hiring practices, or if they should be careful when dealing with a public office.

In the worst cases, your legal rights may have been violated. By hiring unqualified people, both in the private and public sector, professionalism suffers and discrimination based on race, gender or political affiliation can become an everyday occurrence. The papers you file can be lost, or mistakes can be made in standing cases. If these occurrences are intentional or not, you still have the right to professional service and the kommun should strive to provide you with that. In these instances, it is best to contact a lawyer.

As time moves on, the Faroe Islands will need to adopt new norms if it is to participate on the global stage and be considered a peer among governments. Old bastions of culture and society no longer support or advance it, but weighs it down. The Faroe Islands can move on, as it integrates with the rest of the world. As a foreigner living here, it is part and parcel that I help the society free itself of a few of these chains.

- Servus

Xenophobia and the North Atlantic

I just had a run in today with a man who goes by the name of Hans Birgir Hansen. My readers in Tórshavn may know this man, who often writes in Yggje Tíðindi and sometimes hits the nail on the head with his opinions, but not often. My 'conversation' with him started off in Nero, the local ice cream shop. I bought a cup of coffee and sat down to read my pages and write a little bit. He was going on about cheap labor by foreigners ruining the market for everyone else. I got the impression, I am not the kind of guy he likes; I wasn't born on the Faroe Islands. The suspision was confirmed on his return to the library, where he took out the paper and insisted I look at the opinion piece he wrote. He then proceeded back into Nero to confront the lady behind the counter, a lovely young woman who doesn't have the correct skin color, understood as to mean at least one of her parental lines crosses through Africa, but I could be mistaken and the line crossed another region outside of Europe. After being told he is not welcomed to enter the back room, he left, only to return again. This time, he stood in the library and it seemed he was waiting. Well. I walked back to my computer in the reading lounge and he started to stare at me. Then he took his mobile and started to talk, very loudly, about the same ol' thing, plus about how I was sitting here. There will always be people like him who will stand in my way, but I think the tide of time is against him.

But, for now, Hans Hansen has his opinion piece and his influence in the union and I need to deal with the difficulty of finding work with people like him in high places.

To Integrate in the North Atlantic

The North Atlantic is not a hospitable place for anyone to settle down and start a society. Any community in the region must exploit the resources of their surroundings in order to survive. In the case of the Faroe Islands, the historical resource exploited, which still accounts for over 90% of exports, is fish. The same is true for Iceland and Greenland. I can also name sheep and wool, but not much else. While domestic production has shifted to now include services, the society as a whole is still heavily dependent on nature to supply the raw materials needed to drive its economy and sustain the community. So far, the North Atlantic community has lived in the margins, carving out just enough to survive and continue. These slim pickings has a number of consequences, ranging from extremely high prices to high unemployment, both of which makes putting down any roots in the region that much harder.